Joanna & Tim Smolko

Joanna holds a PhD in Musicology from the University of Pittsburgh, and teaches in the musicology department at the University of Georgia and the humanities department of Athens Technical College. She coedited Stephen Collins Foster: Sixty Favorite Songs (Mel Bay, 2009), and served as a Contributing Editor for the 2nd edition of the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Her other publications include articles for academic journals, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles on an array of topics within American music studies. She has served as a private writing consultant for numerous graduate and undergraduate students.
Tim holds Masters degrees in Library Science and Musicology and works as an academic librarian. He creates original records for scholarly books in all branches of the humanities. His first book Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick and a Passion Play: Inside Two Long Songs (2013) won the “Best Book on Recorded Rock Music” award from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) in 2014. He co-authored his second book Atomic Tunes with Joanna.
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Joanna Smolko

2021
  • Co-authored with Tim Smolko Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music  (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2021)

2016
  • "'We've Been Traveling over Rocky Ground': Hymns, Spirituals and Social Justice in the Music of Bruce Springsteen" for Society for Christian Music and Scholarship Conference in Boston, Mass. on February 12, 2016

2015

  • "Shape-Note Hymns as Living History: Music and Community in Alice Parker’s Singers Glen" in American Music Review Vol. XLIV, No. 2, Spring 2015
  • “‘Music that is Made, Not Just Played’: Springsteen's Seeger Sessions” presented at the annual conference of the Society for American Music, Sacramento, CA, March 5, 2015 
  • “Hymns of Joyful Praise: Sacred Harp Singing in Athens, Georgia” presented at the annual conference of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music, Emory University, Atlanta GA, February 14, 2015
  • In progress, contribution to  Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music (under review, Indiana University Press)

2014

  • “Music in Athens: A Sacred Harp Symposium,” organized with Jean Kidula and Susan Thomas as part of the Willson Center “Music in Athens” project, October 20, 2014
  • ​“Southern Fried Foster: The Intersection of Race and Place in Looney Tunes Borrowings of Stephen Foster Songs” presented at the annual conference of the Society for American Music, Lancaster, PA, March 7, 2014.
  • Co-authored chapter (with Tim Smolko) “Living in Harmony”?: American Music and Individualism in The Prisoner” in Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban Age.​ Edited by Stanley Pelkey and Anthony Bushard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)

Tim Smolko

2021
  • Co-authored with Joanna Smolko Atomic Tunes: The Cold War in American and British Popular Music  (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2021)

2016

  • “‘Gimme Shelter’: Fallout Shelters in Early 1960s Popular Music” paper presented at the Society for American Music Conference in Boston, Mass. on March 11, 2016.

2014

  • “Duck and Cover and Sing: Cold War Popular Songs and the Atomic Apocalypse” paper presented at the Spring Musicology Colloquium at UGA School of Music on October 16, 2014
  • Awarded the 2014 Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Award for Best Book on Recorded Rock Music (for Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play: Inside Two Long Songs)
  • Co-authored chapter (with Joanna Smolko) “Living in Harmony”?: American Music and Individualism in The Prisoner” in Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban Age.​ Edited by Stanley Pelkey and Anthony Bushard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)
  • “Add a Book to the Library...by Writing Your Own! An Introduction to Publishing an Academic Monograph” paper presented at UGA Main Library for the Professional Development and Research Committee (PDRC) on February 20, 2014